Work Text:
-----
I know the stars by their names,
Aldebaran, Altair,
And I know the path they take
Up heaven's broad blue stair.
I know the secrets of men
By the look of their eyes,
Their gray thoughts, their strange thoughts
Have made me sad and wise.
But your eyes are dark to me
Though they seem to call and call—
I cannot tell if you love me
Or do not love me at all.
I know many things,
But the years come and go,
I shall die not knowing
The thing I long to know.
-----
Remus Lupin’s knees were clenched tightly on either side of the broomstick. His hands were clutching wads of fabric from the robes of the boy in front of him, knuckles digging into his sides unapologetically.
He leaned forward and hissed, “Slow down, Pads!” into the other boy’s ear.
Predictably, this had no effect on his speed demon friend, who could not seem to understand Hope Lupin’s number one rule of non-perambulatory conveyance: you won't get there any faster if you're dead. Remus’s muggle mother had been teaching him to drive at the time she imparted this lesson, but he could only imagine what she might have to say about flying highway speeds at roughly sixty feet in the air.
Sirius somehow managed not to kill them this time, which Remus put down to sheer dumb luck more than any real skill. Dumb was an adjective he used far too often when describing one of the most intelligent boys in their school.
Sirius had stopped suddenly outside the third floor window, causing Remus to jolt forward into his back and make an “oof” of displeasure. Only Sirius’s dumb luck kept him from falling off the broom altogether. Sirius’s luck, he thought, because Remus would have no luck at all if it weren't for bad luck.
The window was, fortunately, still open, which meant that no one had been in the room since Remus entered it an hour ago. Things were going according to plan.
Remus clambered through the window in an inelegant profusion of too-long limbs. When he was able to stand with dignity again, he turned to the window and gave Sirius a solemn nod.
“See you on the flip-side, Moony!” And, with a wink and a grin, Sirius was off again, relying on the goodwill of the universe to keep him alive long enough to get to the Quidditch pitch, whereupon Messers Padfoot and Prongs would establish their alibi while Mr Wormtail, ostensibly napping in Gryffindor Tower, engaged Phase Three.
Mr. Moony’s alibi was air-tight: he had been seen entering the library roughly an hour ago, heading straight to his usual private study room on the third floor. Since no one had been watching the third floor windows, he had not been seen leaving, nor returning, and could reasonably be assumed to have been studying the entire time.
Remus did his best to tidy his flight tousled honey-brown curls with his fingers before giving the job up as impossible. He sat down to study -- for real, this time -- since it was at least thirty minutes until the Final Phase, when he realized he needed a supplementary text for his additional notes. Remus had always taken something like pride in being the most thorough note-taker at Hogwarts. It was all well and good to be naturally talented, like James or Sirius, but neither of them would have been able to follow through on half their more outrageous ideas without Remus’s notes. Not to mention all the detentions they avoided due to his careful planning.
As he was standing, notes in hand, to go down to the card catalogue, there was a knock at the door. Remus’s chest tightened momentarily with anxiety. This was not part of the plan. But one cannot be both a secret werewolf and poker champion of Hogwarts without learning to keep a straight face, Remus reflected as he schooled his expression to one of slight annoyance.
“This room's taken,” he called out, grateful that he had remembered to shut the window and draw the curtains after Sirius left.
“It's Lily,” called a soft voice from the other side. “I need a favor.”
Remus opened the door. On the other side, Lily stood with a short blonde Hufflepuff. He recognized her -- Lisa Something-or-other, fifth year prefect -- though he couldn't recall much more than that.
“How can I help you?” Remus asked politely, surreptitiously eyeing the digital watch his parents had given him for Christmas.
“We need your help,” Lily told him. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It's a matter of love.”
The thing about being part of an unhealthily close group of friends, such as the Marauders were, was that eventually one really didn't need one's friends to actually be present to get their opinion on things. James and Peter would say that it was his duty as a friend to hear out the long-standing object of James's affections and report back, preferably by acting out every word, tone, and gesture. Sirius, on the other hand, would scoff that girls were daft and it was his duty as a friend to stick to the plan. Remus doubted that Lily Evans had sustained the kind of head injury or potions accident that might lead to a change of heart about James, but he did have a burning desire to cement his alibi and not get caught.
Besides, he had ten minutes. What kind of love problem could possibly be talked about for ten whole minutes?
“Step into my office,” he said cheerfully, gesturing the girls inside. Lily smiled, and Lisa looked immensely grateful.
They stood in silence for a minute, with Remus trying very hard not to look at his watch again.
“Go on,” Lily urged gently. “You can tell him.”
Remus looked over to Lisa, who looked back at him with huge blue eyes and took an unreasonably deep, ragged breath before saying, “You know Sirius Black, right?”
“We've met.” Her face crumpled a little and Remus adopted a gentler tone. “He's one of my best friends. Why?”
Lisa looked like she was about to cry. “Have you ever been so in love with someone you thought you might die?”
“Yes,” Remus whispered truthfully before he could stop himself. He saw Lily start in his periphery but kept his focus on Lisa. “So, Sirius, huh?”
“He’s perfect and gorgeous, and he doesn't even know I exist,” she sniffled.
“Ah,” Remus said delicately, trying not to panic prematurely, “that is a problem, and I'm very sorry for you.”
“We have a plan,” Lily cut in, “to get his attention. We thought she could write him letters, anonymously. Woo him while he's wondering who it is, you know?”
“That's certainly… a plan,” Remus said diplomatically. He was still trying to figure out why exactly they needed him, and long experience with the Marauders had taught him that to ask was dangerous.
“Thing is,” Lisa said, with the hopeful expression and tone of someone about to ask for a giant, horrible favor, “I can't write to save my life.”
Lily added, “And aside from being one of Sirius’s best friends, you've always had a way with words…”
It hit Remus all at once, and the irony of their plan nearly killed him where he stood.
“Wait a second… you want me to write love letters… from her… to Sirius?”
Lisa winced. “I told you it was a stupid plan,” she muttered.
Lily shook her head. “I have never come up with a stupid plan in my life. Remus, if you do this for me I will go on one date with James Potter.”
Remus’s head whipped around. “What?!”
“One date, mind you,” she warned him, holding up a finger.
Remus’s internal versions of his friends weighed in, and even Sirius agreed that he was honor-bound to sacrifice himself at the altar of James's all-consuming love. It was what friends did.
But Remus was not a Marauder for nothing.
“One date will get you some nice letters, sure,” he said casually. “If that's all you want. But give James three dates --” he raised his voice over Lily’s protests, “three dates, and I'll give her poetry.”
“Three dates?!” Lily exclaimed.
“Three is not so many,” Remus reasoned.
“It is when they're with James Potter!”
“Poetry?”
Lily and Remus looked over to where Lisa had spoken up in a tiny, hopeful voice.
“Poetry,” Remus confirmed.
Lily sighed. “Fine. Give the girl poetry.”
Remus smiled his most Marauderly smile. He didn't know whether to be proud or embarrassed that she hadn't even asked if he was any good. “Meet me in the common room after curfew.”
It was at that point that the fireworks they had set as a distraction went off. The game was afoot.
-----
I asked the heaven of stars
What I should I give my love--
It answered me with silence,
Silence above.
I asked the darkened sea
Down where the fishermen go--
It answered me with silence,
Silence below.
Oh, I could give him weeping,
Or I could give him song--
But how can I give silence
My whole life long?
-----
It was nearly impossible to sneak out of the Marauders’ room at night without explaining oneself. Remus had to tell an outrageous lie about prefect business, and Sirius didn't even believe him, though he let it pass because they were all still riding high on the adrenaline of their earlier success.
Lily was waiting in the common room when he descended on tiptoe. She was wearing an outrageously colored floral muumuu and her dressing gown, a sight James probably would have killed at least Peter, if not all of them, to see, and she tucked the red strands of her shoulder-length hair behind her ears as he approached.
“Good evening, Remus. Have you got something for me?”
Remus, feeling like he was in a spy movie, slipped a bit of parchment out of the pocket he sewed inside all his pyjama shirts, usually to hide the map.
“How's this?” he asked, suddenly feeling much less confident than he had earlier in the day when he proposed poetry.
Lily scanned the paper, then he watched her eyes slow down as she read it over a second time.
“Wow, Remus. This is… this is good stuff. You did this in an afternoon?”
Remus shrugged, which was not the same as lying. The truth was that his diary -- charmed heavily to appear blank unless one spilled a drop of his blood on the cover -- was filled with nonsense like this, but he would rather stand up on the teacher's table during dinner and announce that he was a werewolf while the house elves handed out silver daggers than admit to it.
“Lisa’s going to love it,” Lily assured him.
Remus wished that made him feel better about giving away a small piece of his soul. James, he thought a little bitterly, had better love him like a brother for the rest of their natural lives.
“How do you plan to deliver it?” he asked, curious.
Lily smirked, and it was downright Marauderly.
“You leave that to me,” she said primly.
-----
I hid the love within my heart,
And lit the laughter in my eyes,
That when we meet he may not know
My love that never dies.
But sometimes when he dreams at night
Of fragrant forests green and dim,
It may be that my love crept out
And brought the dream to him.
And sometimes when his heart is sick
And suddenly grows well again,
It may be that my love was there
To free his life of pain.
-----
The next morning, Remus was too anxious to eat breakfast, knowing that, at some point during the day, his love poem -- Lisa’s love poem, rather, would reach Sirius.
Lucky for him -- or unlucky perhaps -- he didn't have to wait long. Shortly after the morning owls made their deliveries, it came fluttering down, seemingly from the “sky” of the Great Hall: a letter shaped like a bird. Remus looked at Lily, the top student in Charms, who appeared to be reading something highly amusing in her copy of the Daily Prophet.
The bird note fluttered around a bit before landing gracefully in front of one Sirius Black.
The Great Hall erupted in whispers.
“What's this?” Peter asked.
Remus shoved half a piece of toast in his mouth, having slathered it in butter and marmalade.
James laughed so hard he snorted. “Someone's sent Sirius a love note!” How he knew, Remus couldn't begin to guess. Perhaps love notes in the wizarding world were like Howlers -- easily recognized. Perhaps this bird thing was traditional.
Sirius’s cheeks were tinged almost imperceptibly with pink as he tried to shoo the letter into his bag, where it obviously had no desire to go.
“Aren't you going to read it?” asked ever-helpful Peter.
“Not here,” Sirius hissed, as he finally got the note to agree to its captivity and resumed his breakfast with reluctance.
In fact, Sirius read the note in such privacy that by the time they thought to use the map to find him he had already finished and hid it, telling his friends nothing about the contents. James complained about his un-Marauderly conduct, but Sirius just ignored him.
Sirius’s behavior made Remus nervous. Perhaps he had not liked the note? Perhaps poetry had been a bad call? Remus reminded himself that he had nothing to lose here; that these notes were Lisa’s and he was just the conduit. His only stake was in getting Lily to follow through on her end of the bargain and date James.
He needn't have worried about that, though, as Lily proved to be a woman of her word. Later in the week, Lily came by while they were eating breakfast.
“James,” she said with a slight lilt.
James choked. Sirius, pounding his back, glared up at Lily. Peter looked confused, and a little frightened. Remus methodically applied orange marmalade to his buttered toast.
“Goodness, are you alright?” Lily asked, looking genuinely worried.
“Fine, just fine,” James wheezed.
“Are you lost?” Sirius asked with fake concern.
Lily ignored him. “James, I had some ideas about the prefects’ schedule, and I thought maybe we could talk about it some today. I know it's Hogsmeade, but I thought we could go to the Three Broomsticks and talk over a butterbeer?”
James made a sound somewhere between a squeak and a whine.
“James thanks you for your invitation,” Remus responded calmly, “and would be happy to meet you down in the common room after breakfast so you can walk down to town together.”
James nodded with much vigor, pointing at Remus emphatically. Sirius and Peter rolled their eyes.
“Great!” Lily said brightly, kind enough to ignore the obvious weirdness of the situation. “See you there!” She walked away, down towards her friends, all bouncing red hair and flouncing skirt, and everything James Potter had ever wanted.
“Arr… gah… flabadee,” said the Head Boy intelligently.
“Sorry,” Peter squeaked, “did Lily Evans just ask James out on a date? Our James?”
“My mother’s house must be covered in ice right now,” Sirius replied darkly.
“We should get him ready.” Remus was, naturally, the only one who remained calm, which pleased him. He felt like it added to his mystique.
No one said that perhaps she had suffered a head injury and become confused, though they were all, even James, thinking it.
“You can borrow my good cologne,” Peter offered.
Remus elbowed Sirius until he offered to do that charm that made even James's hair manageably flat. Remus suggested that James wear his t-shirt from the Bowie concert they had all attended last summer, as the color flattered his dark skin, the cut flattered his athletic arms, and Lily would appreciate the reference to Muggle music.
They managed to send James off without a hitch, even calming him down enough that he was able to greet Lily in a somewhat normal and dignified manner.
The other three Marauders all had errands to run, moreso now that they had to divide James's part amongst them. Remus volunteered himself and Sirius to take James's portion so that Peter would have time to meet up with his girlfriend.
“You shouldn't be encouraging this,” Sirius grumbled as he looked over James's list.
“Why on earth not -- oh my god, are you still on that?”
“She's a Slytherin, Remus! She'll corrupt our friend and turn him into a Muggle-hating blood purist!”
Remus rolled his eyes. “I don't think Debbie is recruiting for Voldemort, Sirius. Gaming club, maybe…”
Sirius muttered something that sounded like, “You never know…” but Remus ignored him. Sirius Black could be the biggest drama queen at Hogwarts sometimes.
It was enough, sometimes, to make Remus wonder why he bothered with Sirius at all, never mind dedicating page after embarrassing page of his super secret diary to the idiot.
Don't think about that.
Unfortunately it was at this moment -- they had just left Zonko’s and decided to stop for a butterbeer before doing any more shopping -- that the next note found Sirius. (Was it the third? Remus thought it should have been the third by this point.) It fluttered over, seemingly from nowhere. Remus thought he saw Lisa duck into Honeyduke’s, but it could have been some other short girl with curly blonde hair.
Sirius snatched the note out of the air and stuffed it into his bag, quickly glancing around to see if anyone had noticed.
Remus Lupin, author of the secret love poetry, wanted very much to ignore this and move on. However, Remus Lupin, friend and fellow Marauder, was honor-bound to say something.
“Sirius,” he said quietly, “you seem… upset. Would you like to talk about it?”
Sirius looked around them with suspicion. “Not here.”
When they got to The Three Broomsticks they took a table in the back rather than the Marauders’ usual table, since it was just the two of them. Sirius glanced around them again, and only when he was satisfied that no one was paying them any more attention than usual did he pull the sheets of parchment out of his bag. Remus’s heart stuttered for a moment to realize that Sirius was carrying all of them with him, possibly at all times, before rationalizing to himself that it was probably the only way the other boy felt he might keep the notes safe from the prying eyes of mischievous roommates.
“I’ve been getting these notes, you see,” Sirius said quietly.
Remus paused, always unsure of how he was expected to react to the obvious. “I, ah, did notice, yes.”
“Well, the thing is, Moony… well, just read them. You’ll see.” There was an emphasis on the word “you” that Remus did not know how to handle.
Sirius handed him the sheets of parchment surreptitiously, under the table, as though they were Top Secret sensitive documents. If Remus had felt like a spy before, he now felt like a double agent. This was bordering on dangerous. Danger was not Remus’s middle name. (It was John.)
Remus made a show of reading through each of the four documents -- four, were they on four already?! He would have to tell Lily and Lisa to slow it down -- though he already knew what each of them said. It was an awkward experience for him, mostly because he kept silently kicking himself for word choice, and seeing things that he could improve. Finally he got to the last of them, the one that had just arrived, and read:
When I talk with other men
I always think of you --
Your words are keener than their words,
And they are gentler, too.
When I look at other men,
I wish your face were there,
With its gray eyes and [fair] skin
And tossed black hair.
When I think of other men,
Dreaming alone by day,
The thought of you like a strong wind
Blows the dreams away.
“Well,” he said, passing the papers back in the same sly manner they had been given to him. “Well, then.”
“You see my problem,” Sirius intoned -- dare he even think it? -- seriously.
Remus, who could see a great deal many problems, more than Sirius typically could, did not know a safe response to this.
“Someone is in love with you?” he guessed.
“Anonymously in love with me,” Sirius corrected. “Enough to write me loads of poetry that is, frankly, too good to even be made fun of.”
Sirius could make fun of anything. One time, Remus had nearly gnawed his own arm off during the full moon and, afterwards, Sirius made so many funny jokes about it that Remus had literally pulled a stitch in his side laughing.
“And… how does that… make you feel?” For a number of reasons, it was a struggle to get the words out.
“Annoyed,” Sirius frowned. “I have no way of contacting this person, no way of finding out who they are or if I feel the same about them.”
“I think that's kind of the point,” Remus mused. “You're supposed to judge them based on their letters, and not any preconceived notions you might get from meeting them.”
Sirius appeared to be thinking hard about this, so intensely and so long that Remus became concerned that he might do himself a harm.
“I like the poetry,” mused Sirius, the Bowie of Hogwarts, who never concerned himself with silly things like gender norms. “And I think I could easily fall in love with the person who wrote it.”
“Really?” Remus coughed.
“It's not just the words themselves. It's the type of person who could make something like that… I could spend the rest of my life with that kind of love.”
This was Sirius at his most introspective. It was intimidating and frightening in a way Remus hadn't felt since second year, when James, adjusting his glasses, had told him they needed to have an official Roommates’ Meeting about his “furry little problem” and Remus had known by the look in Sirius’s eyes that they knew, and that it might not be so bad.
And Remus knew full well that Sirius’s family had left a love vacuum inside his heart, one Sirius was constantly trying to fill. Suddenly, he felt the twinge in his stomach that usually signified he was doing something wrong.
“Well, I hope they meet you quickly,” he told Sirius in his most reassuring friendly voice. “I hope they don't keep you waiting long.”
-----
“I would say that I must have died, but I don't think I've been good enough for heaven.”
James Potter fell back onto his bed with a happy sigh, his arms and legs splaying out like a rag doll.
“So,” Peter said through a mouthful of candy, “you're saying it went well?”
“Well?! Well is for amateurs, Mr. Wormtail. It went…” James sighed again. “It went splendidly.”
Remus, in particular, was glad to hear it, though he would reserve his judgment until he saw Lily next. Peter must have had the same thought, because when he caught Remus's eye he made a face.
James was beginning to tell the story of his first date with Lily Evans, a story that would take at least thrice as long to discuss as it had taken to live, when Sirius came bursting into the room.
“Gentlemen,” he said, his voice strained, “we have a problem.”
James sat up in bed, a little put out by the interruption until he saw the queer look on Sirius's face.
“What's wrong, mate?” he asked, thoughts of Lily put to the side in favor of Marauderly concern.
To Remus's utter mortification, he had to sit through a meeting on the love poems he had written to Sirius, ostensibly from an unknown source.
It took two and a half hours.
The meeting was disbanded due to dinner, and not any reasonable resolutions. They had, in fact, come up with no way to determine the source of the letters. Remus had made a completely hollow promise to look around in the library later, which would, in actuality, give him a chance to study without intervention of the Marauderly kind.
Intervention was inevitable, it seemed, though it came in the form of Lily Evans this time.
“Remus,” she said quietly, looking about with sly eyes before she sat at his table.
“They're not here,” Remus told her with a desperate little laugh. “They think I'm researching a way to determine where those notes are coming from.”
“How has the, ah, information been received?” Lily asked.
Remus shook his head. “Look, I've done the best I can. Tell her to… excuse me, but it's time to make a move or call it quits.”
Lily nodded. “I'll let her know.”
-----
The moon is a curving flower of gold,
The sky is still and blue;
The moon was made for the sky to hold,
And I for you;
The moon is a flower without a stem,
The sky is luminous;
Eternity was made for them,
To-night for us.
-----
Had he been Peter, he might have gone down to the kitchens. Had he been James, it would have been the lake. Had he been Sirius, he would have climbed atop the Astronomy Tower and sulkes until Kingdom Come.
But he was Remus, so he went to the library, to his special room, to study. Potions tests don't wait for a broken heart, after all.
Sirius was, in fact, going to the Astronomy tower, where Lisa would finally introduce herself and lay claim to Remus's letters. It was a new moon, Remus's favorite night of the month, and usually the boys would sneak into Hogsmede for a drink and a good time. Not this night. This night, James and Peter were in the dorm, waiting for Sirius to return with news of a new love affair.
It didn't change anything, Remus reasoned. Not really. He hadn't lost a thing.
A single tear fell onto the parchment containing his potions notes, and Remus allowed it. But that was all he would allow. His body, however, had other ideas: mainly, to cry like a child with a skinned knee for thirty minutes or so. When he stopped, finally, he opened his journal, which was a completely manly thing to carry around at all times, and wrote:
My peace is hidden in his breast
Where I shall never be,
Love comes to-night to all the rest,
But not to me.
Almost the moment he closed the cover and turned to his Potions work with a wary eye, there was a fervent knock at the door. It was so entitled, so demanding, it could only have been one person.
“Moony, let me in!” Sirius called from the other side. “I know you're in there; I have the map.”
Remus sighed and, hoping his face was not all red and splotchy, opened the door.
“Aren't you supposed to be meeting the love of your life right now?” he asked, steadfastly looking at the point right over Sirius's left shoulder.
“Yeah... about that. You have something you want to tell me?”
Remus looked down at his friend with wide eyes that he hoped looked more innocent than they were. One couldn't be a secret werewolf or poker champion of Hogwarts without learning to bluff.
“Don't give me the eyes,” Sirius growled, shoving his way into the study room. “Did you write all that stuff for Lisa or not?”
Remus shut the door carefully, almost without a sound. “Yes,” he said to his own shoes. “I wrote all that... stuff... that Lisa sent you.”
“Why would you do that, Moony?”
Sirius had levered up onto the balls of his feet, something he only did when he needed to feel taller, less insecure. Something he almost never did around Remus, despite their vast difference in heights. That, even more than his hurt tone, affected Remus.
“I... I don't... she asked me to?”
Sirius looked skeptical. “She asked you to write a bunch of really amazing poetry for her?”
“It was all Lily's idea! She said she would go on three dates with James if I did!” Remus explained. “I thought... surely... ”
Sirius's mouth was a small line of displeasure. “While I'm sure James would appreciate your sacrifice, you had no right getting me involved.”
He had a point, and Remus suddenly felt terrible. “I wouldn't have, truly, if it were someone I thought you wouldn't like. But Lisa's nice.”
Sirius shook his head. He stepped forward. “Lisa didn't write those letters. Lisa didn't write that poetry.”
Remus's mouth went dry. “No. No, she didn't.”
“So,” he said, perfectly reasonable in both tone and logic, “how could I fall for Lisa?”
Remus had, without his knowledge or consent, been backed up against the door. He didn't know how to answer that question. It was too close to a line of questioning that could only lead to pain, pain and the dissolution of the Marauders as they knew it. The Marauders as they had been for the last seven years. His friends might be okay with the fact that he was a werewolf. They might be okay with the fact that he was bisexual. But Remus did not flatter himself that they would be able to overlook a massive crush on one of their own. That would be just a bit much, even for them.
“Tell the truth,” Sirius demanded, his molten silver eyes burning, boring into Remus's very essence, the quiddity of him. “Who'd you write all that stuff for?”
Remus shifted his own gaze to the side, unable to take the pressure any more. “I wrote it for you,” he said, voice almost inaudible.
Sirius did not relent. “For me, from Lisa?” he demanded.
“No. Just... for you.” He gathered what scraps of courage he could find – and he was a Gryffindor, after all – and looked his best friend in the eye. “For you, from me. Because it's how I feel.”
Sirius nodded. “Right,” he said, his brow furrowed in thought. “So, if I told you, Mr. Moony, that I, Mr. Padfoot, had fallen in love with the person who wrote that poetry for me, you would not necessarily object?”
Remus would have stumbled, had the door not been supporting him. “Er – that is – well... no. I rather think not. But do you mean –”
“Shut up,” Sirius said, “I want to try something.”
And then Sirius kissed him. And it was glorious.
Well, it was a little awkward, and it took them a few seconds to establish a good rhythm, but Remus probably would have cut off his own right arm just to say he'd kissed Sirius Black, and that made it perfect.
Sirius pulled back, after a time, still looking pensive. “That was the best snog I've ever had in my whole life,” he said, accusatory.
“Well, I do apologize,” was Remus's stiff response. “I'll try to –”
Any sarcastic response he had been thinking of making was wiped out of his head when Sirius leaned up and kissed him again.
Maybe words were overrated anyway.
-----
I am wild, I will sing to the trees,
I will sing to the stars in the sky,
I love, I am loved, he is mine,
Now at last I can die!
I am sandaled with wind and with flame,
I have heart-fire and singing to give,
I can tread on the grass or the stars,
Now at last I can live!
-----